Everyone has been annoyed by the Caps Lock key at one time or another. But you don’t have to go to the extreme lengths of disabling it just to keep it from becoming a distraction. One way I’ve dealt with the Caps Lock key by making the Shift key shut it off. This way, if for some reason it is left on, my natural flow of typing results in me turning it off.

No one likes it when you accidentally hit the Caps Lock key while on a typing roll and suddenly you are showing in a chat or even document. You have to go back and edit what you typed. Very annoying. So, here is a look at one of the preemptive steps you can take to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.

Use Shift Key to Disable the Caps Lock Key

Open the Region and Language control panel. The easiest way to do this is to search for “language” from the Start Menu and then click the Region and Language link.

In the Region and Language window navigate to the Keyboards and Languages tab. Here click the Change Keyboards button.

The Text Services and Input Languages window will come up. Go to the Advanced Key Settings tab and then select the Press the SHIFT key. Click OK to save changes and exit.

You can test it out right away on your keyboard. Enable the Caps Lock key, and instead of pressing it again to disable it, just press the Shift key. Most keyboards will have an indicator light to let you know whether it’s on or off.

And if you would like an audio cure when you accidentally hit everyone’s favorite key to hate, another cool and useful tip is to make the Caps Lock Key beep and alert you if it has been pressed.

19 Comments

19 Comments

TLSabados

Great Tip! Will be especially useful when I’m putting in a password and what I’m typing is hidden and I get a “wrong password” message, not realizing the cap lock is on. Also great because my Microsoft 5000 keyboard doesn’t have a light to show when the cap’s is on.

Thanks for all the great help above. My question is this: I need the caps lock to stay on, and I can only get it to do one word at a time. After every word I type (and this is for my work) I have to press the caps lock again to get the second word to be all caps, then again for the third word, etc. This is so frustrating when I have lines that need to be in all caps. I don’t want to have to go back and highlight or click…I just want to keep rolling along with the text. Any help would be so, so appreciated…

ahhh, relief! Finally!!, my continual frustration is over and there’s a sensible flow to keyboarding again. I have been around long enough that Shift was originally what unlocked CapsLock. When keyboards changed I was so irritated. There are so many times that upgrades or ‘enhancements’ seem backward to me and require more work than before. Thank you, thank you. Those were the easiest and most thorough instructions – right from the beginning. I didn’t once get to any point and go “what?!, I don’t see that!”. All is well. Bless you.

A very helpful tip, thank you!
Like a couple of other folk above, I found navigating to the Advanced Key Settings tricky. The route is obscure and the “find a setting” box does not find it. So, hit ‘Devices’ in Settings, then ‘Typing’, then scroll down a bit to ‘More keyboard settings’, hit ‘Advanced keyboard settings’ in that section and then ‘Input language hot keys’. That opens the ‘Advanced keyboard settings’ window exactly as shown above.

Windows 10 (at least Win 10 Pro): key in [Windows][r] keys together if you don’t have Cortana running. Type in ‘Fonts’ (or open Fonts in the Control Panel). Then at the bottom left, click on ‘Text Services and Input Language’, then go to ‘Spelling, typing, & keyboard settings’ on the right hand side. At the bottom of that winder there is ‘Advanced keyboard settings’ -> ‘Input language hot keys’.
That link brings up the window that you can then choose the SHIFT key to turn off Caps Lock.

On my new keyboard using Windows 10 – the only thing I found that works is to angle a screwdriver or pen under the side of the Caps Lock key and lift key out. Tape it somewhere if handy, if you don’t want to lose the key cover. Makes your keyboard look weird, but it works for me!